NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SERPENT (JOAKIM OLSSON)

Feb 102016

(We are grateful that Comrade Aleks has brought us yet another doomy interview, this time with drummer Joakim Olsson of Sweden’s Serpent.)

Sweden is the epicenter of the modern vintage doom rock movement, and Serpent is one of its competent members. The band was formed in 2012, but already has two full-length records – Slaves of Babylon (2013) and Nekromant (2015). The last one was released on the 18th of December, 2015, by Transubstans Records, and believe me – this power trio know how to play damned rocking doom metal!

Serpent’s guitarist Adam Lundqvist knows how to create impressive riffs and solos, Joakim Olsson is precise and hard-handling with his drums, and Mattias Ottosson is an excellent vocalist with an expressive manner of singing that is ideal for this kind of music (besides that, he knows how to treat with the bass). Do you want a portion of murderously effective doom rock? Follow me, because Joakim is ready to spread the word of Serpent. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL CURSE — “LITANIES UNTO DJINN”

Premieres No Responses »

Feb 102016

I discovered Argentina’s Infernal Curse when Iron Bonehead Productions released their EP The End Upon Us in 2014 (on Bandcamp here), which I gather represented an evolution in sound from their 2012 debut album Awakening of the Damned. Iron Bonehead is now poised to release the band’s second album, aptly entitled Apocalipsis, and it represents even further movement — not forward, or backward, but through some interdimensional membrane on a course that takes them (and us) into a realm where horrors reign supreme.

“Litanies Unto Djinn” is the album’s second track, and we bring it to you today, as a ghastly offering to the dark things the lurk in your mind. With the rhythmic tick of a cymbal and slow, dismal, distorted chords, the band launch the song with a foreshadowing of the doom to come — and then the true carnage begins. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 4 Responses »

Feb 102016

It’s conceivable that there are people out there who actually noticed that notwithstanding my earlier promise about posting one of these installments every day this week, I failed to do that yesterday. In between other posts that were more urgent and interference from my fucking day job, I just couldn’t manage it. So, to keep on schedule, I’m posting two installments today!

In case anyone happens to stumble on this post with no idea what I’m talking about, this is my year-end list of 2015’s “Most Infectious Metal Songs”, which will come to an end on Sunday, and there are 20 previous installments you can inspect via this link.

KHEMMIS

I am so damned happy that Khemmis‘ 2015 album has been so damned successful. Lots of people knew how good they were before I had my first taste of their music at the 2014 Denver Black Sky festival, but I still like to think I was at least hanging around the launching pad before the rocket took off. Continue reading »

SHADOW WOODS METAL FESTIVAL 2016: MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS ABOUT IMPENDING DEVASTATION IN MARYLAND

Metal News 7 Responses »

Feb 092016

This has turned out to be an exciting day for U.S. festival announcements. In addition to the news that Panopticon will be one of the headliners at the Migration Fest on the west coast, the Shadow Woods Metal Festival also made some announcements about the second edition of their cool event, coming this fall on the other side of the country.

As was true last year, Shadow Woods will be an open-air camping metal party that will run for three days in central Maryland: from Thursday, September 15th through Sunday, September 18th at Camp Hidden Valley, in White Hall, Maryland, the same location where the first edition of the fest was held last year.

Organizer Mary Spiro and her team (who are joined by Baltimore’s Grimoire Records as co-producers this year) have been announcing performers since January, and six more bands were named today. So far, 21 bands are confirmed to perform, and more are still yet to come. Here’s what it looks like as of today: Continue reading »

BREAKING NEWS: PANOPTICON WILL BE ONE OF THE HEADLINERS AT MIGRATION FEST IN THE BAND’S FIRST LIVE PERFORMANCE (PLUS NEWS ABOUT TICKET SALES)

Metal News 13 Responses »

Feb 092016

In late January we very excitedly spread the word about an official announcement we’d been waiting on for months — that two of America’s most respected underground labels, Gilead Media and 20 Buck Spin, would be collaborating to present a metal festival on August 12-14, 2016, in Olympia, Washington: the first Migration Fest. And today we bring you more tremendously exciting news: The festival headliners will include the first-ever live performance of Panopticon.

Migration Fest’s official announcement follows, along with a statement by Panopticon’s Austin Lunn about his decision, at long last, to perform Panopticon’s music live, the people who will be on stage with him, and some other interesting news….

Also below, we’re including the festival’s announcement about when early-bird passes for the fest will go on sale .

POWER ELECTRONICS ROUNDUP

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Feb 092016

(Allen Griffin brings us short reviews of three new Power Electronics releases, from Ten Thousand Miles of Arteries, Whorid, and Nekrasov.)

For all the counter-culture caché one might attribute to their particular niche in some extreme music sub-genre, nothing tends to be as purely off-putting and anti-social as Power Electronics. The bastard offspring of Extreme Metal’s sonic palette and Free Jazz/Improv’s penchant for free-form chaos, Power Electronics attempts to pry open the deepest recesses of humanity’s psyche with waves of pure noise.

Over the course of the genre’s development, the sound has evolved from pure blankets of static and feedback, to a more complex and detailed approach, well illustrated by this trio of recent and upcoming releases. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRIMINAL — “SHOCK DOCTRINE”

Premieres 1 Response »

Feb 092016

On March 11, 2016, Metal Blade Records will release Fear Itself, the eighth studio album by the band Criminal and the group’s first full-length since 2011. One electrifying song from Fear Itself (“Down Driven”) debuted near the end of last month, and now we bring you another one: “Shock Doctrine“.

The new album is the latest chapter in a story that began in about 1991, when Chilean guitarist/vocalist Anton Reisenegger founded the band in Santiago after the break-up of the Chilean death metal band Pentagram. After achieving considerable success during the ’90s, Reisenegger reconstituted the band following his move to the UK in 2001, and continued to release albums (including two on Metal Blade in 2004 and 2005). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20)

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015 5 Responses »

Feb 082016

Welcome to the 20th installment of our list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. We’ll be finished with the rollout of this list next Sunday. To hear the other songs on the list up until now, click this link.

Today we have three diverse pieces of metal, each of them from albums that were the source of multiple candidates for this list.

KATAVASIA

In the early part of last year we devoted quite a lot of attention to this Greek band’s 2015 album Sacrilegious Testament, and still more attention when year-end-list time rolled around — which is not surprising, given who’s in the band: Continue reading »

AMIENSUS BRING US SAMPLES OF NEW MUSIC

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Feb 082016

As regular NCS readers know full well, we’ve been following and supporting Minnesota’s Amiensus for years, because they’ve been consistently delivering such fine music. Last year they released their second album Ascension (reviewed here), but they will have even more new music for us in 2016, and we’re giving you some tantalizing tastes of it below.

The band tell us that they have plans to release a new split in the first part of the year, then an EP in September, followed by another split in December — and in the player below you can check out excerpts from three of the new songs, with music that ranges from jolting, to majestic, to mystical. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JOHN PETTIBONE (HEIRESS)

Interviews 2 Responses »

Feb 082016

Heiress and John Pettibone (far right)

John Pettibone has been a fixture in the Seattle music scene for more than two decades. During the early and mid-’90s he was the front man for a pioneering straight-edge hardcore band named Undertow, and later became the vocalist for the fondly remembered and sorely missed Himsa from about 2000 until the band ended in 2008 (several us at this site are huge Himsa fans to this day, and I featured them in one of my Rearview Mirror posts only a week ago).

Since the end of 2008, Pettibone has been the vocalist for Heiress, a band founded by guitarist Wes Reed who have recorded two highly regarded albums — 2013’s Early Frost and 2015’s Of Great Sorrow — and now have a third one coming soon. The new one is named Made Wrong, it was recorded with producer Matt Bayles, and it’s set for release on March 18 by The Mylene Sheath (pre-orders are expected to begin on February 19).

It has become increasingly difficult to sum up Heiress‘ sound in simple genre terms as the sound has evolved, and that’s likely to become even more of a challenge after people hear Made Wrong. It’s dark, heavy as hell, emotionally intense, and intensely memorable, too. I have lots of other thoughts about the music that I’m going to try to sum up later this week. For now I’ll just say it’s an album you won’t want to miss.

I have the good fortune to bring you an interview I conducted by e-mail with John Pettibone last week — and you’ll get some insights about Made Wrong along the way. Continue reading »

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